Michael Diamond Resnick (March 5, 1942 – January 9, 2020) was an American writer and editor of Science Fiction and Fantasy, perhaps best known for his many anthologies where he had a variety of writers contribute stories on a special theme—often involving an Alternate History. He had also written many novels and short stories of his own. Most of his solo work was generally comedic.
He had won a variety of awards for his short fiction. His novella "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" won both the Hugo and Nebula Award, as well as various other international awards.
He regularly collaborated with other writers, including his wife, Carol Resnick. His daughter, Laura Resnick, is also a writer.
Works with a page on this wiki:
- The Cassandra Project (with Jack McDevitt)
- A Fable of Tonight trilogy (Stalking the Unicorn, Stalking the Vampire, and Stalking the Dragon)
- The Red Tape War (with Jack Chalker and George Alec Effinger)
- Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future
- The The Further Adventures of Batman anthology has two contributions:
- "Neutral Ground"
- "Museum Piece"
Selected Other Works
- The Best Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Gunslinger in the Whole Damn Galaxy
- Birthright: The Book of Man
- The Branch
- The Buntline Special
- Dragon America
- The Eros series:
- Eros Ascending
- Eros at Zenith
- Eros Descending
- Eros at Nadir
- The Goddess of Ganymede (his first published novel), and its sequel, Pursuit on Ganymede
- Ivory
- Kirinyaga
- Lady with an Alien
- Lara Croft: The Amulet of Power
- The Other Teddy Roosevelts (collection)
- The Outpost
- Paradise Trilogy:
- Paradise
- Purgatory
- Inferno
- The Soothsayer Trilogy:
- Soothsayer
- Oracle
- Prophet
- The Starship Series:
- Starship: Mutiny
- Starship: Pirate
- Starship: Mercenary
- Starship: Rebel
- Starship: Flagship
- The Three-Legged Hootch Dancer
- The Widowmaker Series:
- The Widowmaker
- The Widowmaker Reborn
- The Widowmaker Unleashed
Selected Anthologies
- Alternate Presidents
- Alternate Kennedys
- Alternate Skiffy
- Alternate Tyrants
- Alternate Worldcons
- Christmas Ghosts
- The Dragon Done It
- Future Earths: Under African Skies
- Future Earths: Under South American Skies
- Girls for the Slime God
- Return of the Dinosaurs
- Sherlock Holmes in Orbit
- Whatdunnits
Tropes in his other works:
- Bad with the Bone: In "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" the primitive night creatures (the surviving humans) use bones of their fellow tribesmen as weapons and in the end club Exobiologist to death with a shinbone.
- Boldly Coming: In The Outpost, Hurricane Smith, one of the galaxy's top bounty hunters, has this trope as his main passion in life. He's already had five ex/late-wives, all different alien species, as he finds human women to "all look the same". After he and his fellow bounty hunters help save the galactic human Democracy from a genocidal alien invasion, he is last seen in romantic pursuit of a sentient spaceship (with female A.I.), as he rebounds from the death-in-battle of his last wife, an insectoid shapeshifter.
- Cursed with Awesome: The novella "How I Wrote the New Testament, Ushered in the Renaissance, and Birdied the 17th Hole at Pebble Beach" has, as the description puts it, "an itinerant Jewish businessman commanded (condemned?) by Christ to "tarry here until I return," spending the next 2000 years trying to keep busy and occasionally helping along the advancement of civilization".
- Dark Messiah: Immanuel Jeremiah Branch of The Branch is a strange variation of this. He is the Messiah promised in the Old Testament but is completely self-serving and evil.
- Divided States of America: In The Buntline Special the United States of America's border, as of 1881 stops at the Mississipii River thanks to Indian (specifically Cheyenne and Apache) magic. There are white settlements west of the river but they are independent entities and exist with Indian sufferance.
- Earth That Used to Be Better: "Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Turn Off the Sun?" is an exaggerated version; entire countries and ethnic groups have been moving off-planet, and the population of Earth is down to about eight people.
- Fan Convention: Alternate Worldcons and Again, Alternate Worldcons, are two anthologies of Alternate History stories edited by Resnick, all set at that history's version of the World Science Fiction Convention.
- Flying Dutchman: The short story How I Wrote the New Testament, Ushered in the Renaissance, and Birdied the 17th Hole at Pebble Beach goes for a humorous take on the story of the Wandering Jew.
- From Bad to Worse: Done to the Nth level in his books Paradise, Purgatory, and Inferno (which he admits are based upon the histories of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda, respectively). Particularly appalling is the ending of Purgatory, where a tree which was an historic landmark for the natives is chopped down for firewood.
- Genocide Dilemma: Subverted in Birthright: The Book of Man. The other 13,042 sentient races in the Galaxy seem to have no moral qualms whatsoever about hunting Humanity to extinction. It's averted only by the fact that Humanity's last survivors - one man and three women - decide to go out with a bang (literally - they commit suicide by blowing up the planet they're on) rather than surrender and be executed. Same result though, really.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: The protagonist of the Soothsayer trilogy carries a stuffed animal as a tragic reminder of the only person who ever loved her and the one act of human kindness she ever received.
- Humans Are Bastards: "A Hunger in the Soul" has an adventurer-journalist abusing and eventually murdering the native inhabitants of an alien world in his quest to find a missing doctor who has developed the cure for a disease ravishing human civilisation. He eventually finds the doctor who has no intention of handing over the cure, having decided from the journalist's actions that humanity deserves everything it gets.
- Humans Are Cthulhu: "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" follows a group of alien archaeologists studying Earth after the fall of the vast, tyrannical Empire of Man and extinction of the feared human race.
- Lamarck Was Right: In the Widowmaker series, the main character is the most lethal fighter in the galaxy but contracted a disease with no cure. He had himself frozen until a cure can be found but due to maintenance expenses, the doctors unfreeze him to make bounty hunter clones. The clones have his memories and skills but have subtle (sometimes) differences.
- Loss of Identity: The short story "Me and My Shadow" posits a world akin to that in The Demolished Man, where convicted criminals are "erased" and given benign personalities. The narrator is one of these—except for the part where he still has a little voice in his head that tells him to kill people. And his new personality as an accountant is meticulous enough to make sure that this time, he won't get caught...
- Magic from Technology: The Buntline Special has Thomas Edison and Ned Buntline working under the auspices of the US government to find a way to circumvent Native American magic.
- Magical Native American: In The Buntline Special Native American magic has been powerful enough to keep the United States of America east of the Mississippi as of 1881.
- Mate or Die: Resnick wrote a parody of "The Cold Equations" called "Catastrophe Baker and the Cold Equations"
, in which the spaceship's pilot and the stowaway keep the temperature up by generating their own heat. - Rage Against the Author: The story "His Award-Winning Science Fiction Story" includes bickering and negotiating between the stock science fiction characters and Resnick himself.
- Space Sector: In the Starship series the Republic is divided into named sectors (the McAllister Sector, the Matheson Sector, the Terrazane Sector) which are collections of star systems complete with "capital worlds".
